


Better This Present than a Past like That

by glassessay



Series: Memories of those Worser Hours [2]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Could I have waited less than a week and posted this on jeames on main day? no, M/M, The Terror Bingo 2019, They still don’t kiss sorry, Time Travel Fix-It, Unresolved Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames, or the consequences thereof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21535951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassessay/pseuds/glassessay
Summary: James Fitzjames is going to leave the Arctic—bothfinallyandalive.They are all going to leave, as whole and healthy as can be managed; it is a triumph of Empire, God, and impossible luck. Sir John will be a hero, Francis a knight, and James a captain on whatever frozen expedition he wants most. This has been his purpose since the day they first set sail, since the day he first woke up from death, and every single day after.He cannot help but wonder if maybe it is not a perfect ending after all.
Series: Memories of those Worser Hours [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552087
Comments: 46
Kudos: 284
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	Better This Present than a Past like That

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably make more sense if you read [‘Tis Past, and So am I](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18853498) first, but honestly? There’s no plot in this you really only need a working understand of the premise. (Aka, James does a demoralizing time loop and maybe saves the day but not before being sad a lot.)
> 
> This is a fill for [The Terror Bingo](https://theterrorbingo.tumblr.com/), prompt “safe passage”. Please ignore how hideously behind schedule I already am.

They will make Sir John a hero for this.

Northwest Passage, found by the grace of God, as Sir John says; or the grace of Sir John, as some of the men might say; or the grace of pure, unbridled luck, as James is certain Francis thinks.

James himself, of course, knows it is a combination of luck and god: _a_ god, at least, though not perhaps the one he was meant to believe in.

But no matter how they made it through, the end result will be the same. Sir John will be lauded as a hero, all memory of his failures erased with one fell swoop of ink across the map. They will all be considered heroes, if they play the part well enough. If they allow themselves to tell the story the public will want to hear.

James will likely have his pick of Arctic commands, though he has in no way earned them, and he is certain he will spend a week despairing that his years—decade— _lifetime_ —upon the ice will only lead to more time in the frozen expanses of the earth. But he will no doubt determine that there is nothing keeping him in England anymore, not really, not that _wants_ him kept; so he will set out on another journey that with luck will not be near so long as this one has been, and hope to return home with only slightly less of his life ahead of him.

Five more years and he might even make a knighthood, if he angles his ambitions thusly. A bastard half-breed with a knighthood—what will his cousins think of that?

What would his father have?

There will be a knighthood awarded far sooner than five years from now, though not to James. The discovery of the passage demands no lesser payment, and the Lords of the Admiralty, in spite of their hauteur and bigotry, will be forced by rank and protocol to finally allow that Englishman’s blessing to be bestowed upon Francis. They will make him Sir Francis, and he in turn will surely make Miss Cracroft into Lady Crozier, and everything will be as that cruel mistress fate has always wanted it to be.

James can see it all before him like a series of tableaus, clear as the icy sea around him, as the echoing sounds of too many men crammed onto _Terror_ ’s decks. He can feel the certainty of its truth as he once knew the past that was then the future. As he used to know, with implacable certainty, how he would die.

He has lived this expedition and the ways it could go wrong a dozen times over; it was an ordeal that he can only thank for showing him how hideously wrong he had been. A dozen aching, painful repetitions, to finally beat it into his thick head that Francis’ plan was the only hope they had at surviving.

And survive they seem to have managed. Though they are currently frozen in, James has no real doubt that they will leave the ice, with a map of the Northwest Passage and an impossibly small loss of life as their spoils. That, more than anything, should fill James with joy. With happiness. With, at the very least, contentment.

Perhaps all those years on the ice have frozen him solid, for he cannot help but stare up at the wooden beams of his cabin’s ceiling in the little hours of the night and wonder if maybe this is not the perfect ending after all.

One morning when he wakes all he can see are those whitewashed beams above him and the sunlight streaming through the window and everything feels wrong; wrong like horror, wrong like a heart beating outside of his chest, wrong like he’s done this all before—

No. Oh dear god in heaven, no, please, he can’t—he can’t be stuck again he doesn’t even know what went _wrong_ this time or—

Or is going to go wrong.

No, no, no, he has to stop this here, he has to—something is tangled around him he can’t bloody _move_ —he has to stop this he—

“James!” A weight pushes him back down; he struggles weakly against it, mind hurtling back into his body. “By god man, wake up!”

James stills in a shiver, breathing laborious and uneven, and wrenches his eyes open. He squints blearily at the room around him until it resolves into his lodgings on _Terror_ —and the weight pushing him down into Francis’ hand.

“What—” he croaks out.

“You were having a fit,” Francis says. “You wouldn’t wake.” He removes his hand and steps back. James feels heavier in its absence.

“I—” James coughs. “Francis—”

“I only—It’s nearly five bells, now, and..” Francis clears his throat. “Well.”

James blinks stupidly at him for a long moment. Then he remembers; it’s time for his watch over the ship—and for once, Francis is willingly handing it over.

“Forgive me,” James manages. “I’ll only be a moment.”

Francis nods, then hesitates, cautiously avoiding James’ gaze. “Is—Is all well, James?”

“Of course,” he says. It rasps against his throat.

“I am sure—” Francis continues haltingly. “I am sure Dr. Peddie, or Dr. Stanley could…”

“It was only a dream,” James hastily excuses. “I am fit for duty, I assure you.” He sits upright in his cramped little berth and starts tugging at his sleeping shirt.

“Of course, James, it is only—” Francis cuts off with a choked sound.

James catches the direction of his gaze and looks down at himself.

Ah, yes. He is quite the harrowing sight to behold.

After that first, hope-filled morning of the command meeting, James had finally taken the opportunity to breathe and cautiously rejoice. His repetitions were surely over. They had managed to convinced Sir John—they might just find safe passage and live to see home again.

It was in that glow—that hope that still fluttered at the edges of his mind—that he discovered the extent of the marks his ordeal had left upon him.

His body had retained a mark of every injury he could remember having gotten in any repetition—and some he could hardly remember at all. His flesh was a motley collection of cuts and bruises, more than one body—even that of a working sailor—ought ever hold. Enough hurts to count a dozen years all lived at once; and that said nothing of the great, gashing scars from his ill-advised fight against the beast, nor the red and raw wounds from his slowly fatal bullet. This time around everything will eventually heal into a patchwork of abundant but functioning scar tissue, but he still looks like a man who has been beaten to hell and back—and with no reasonable explanation as to _why_.

Only a heartless monster would ignore such marks on another person. And Francis, though he may not like James— _yet_ , he tells himself, _yet_ —is not a monster.

James hurries his shirt back over his head and swings his legs over the side of the berth. “I only need a moment to dress, Francis, and then I will relieve you.”

Francis frowns at him for several thumping heartbeats. When he speaks, his voice is low and gentle. “If it is scurvy or some other illness, James, we need to know. For the good of the crew as well as yourself.”

“I know, Francis.” James gives a tight smile. “I can promise you I have none of the navy’s usual diseases, especially not—not scurvy. Everything is healing quite nicely, there’s no risk of that specter. Why, you should have seen me two weeks ago,” he says with a half-hearted laugh.

The quip was badly chosen, he realizes as Francis’ countenance goes from concerned to startled. James quickly changes heading to reassurance. “I am well, Francis, I swear.”

James can only hope he is convincing enough for Francis’ searching gaze. He seems to pass muster after a long few moments, as Francis nods and folds his hands behind his back.

“I trust your judgement, James,” he says, and turns to leave.

For a split second, James can only hear _I trust you_ echoing through his head. It conjures the ghost of a Francis that will now never be.

“Wait,” James calls, reaching out a hand to stop Francis from leaving.

Francis halts and turns back, his fingers caught in James’ clammy grip.

Their hands hang there, connected, for just long enough for James to think _what am I doing_ and let go. He closes his eyes, breathes in deeply, and says, “Thank you for your concern.”

Francis only nods and leaves.

There are still issues that must be brought to Francis’ and Sir John’s attention: the poisoned and spoiling tined stores, for one thing, and—well. James has half a mind to turn Hickey in for all the horrifying things he did. Would have done.

But he has not done them yet, and perhaps deprived of the motive or opportunity he never will. James cannot condemn anyone for being tomorrow’s murderer; he cannot bring justice down on a man who has not yet been unjust.

Still—the knowledge weighs on him. As does, it seems, everything else.

If before James saw an inevitable future written in stony ice, now he can only see the ghost of a past that has not happened.

It is a shockingly awful thing, to know how a man might’ve died. Like a veil of horror over every man, he cannot stop seeing the starving, the bruised, the rotting. Over Irving is his corpse desecrated in death. Over Morfin, a desperate prayer for relief splattered across pale stones. Over Sir John—between them like a haze of unfading fog—James cannot stop seeing a dark abyss opening to swallow him whole.

At first he attempts to console himself with the company of men whose deaths he’d never known—but even there lay wounds he cannot escape. A Goodsir without Lady Silence by his side. A Francis without a reason to sober up. A James who never understood his own idiocy.

The last, at least, is a burden only the others have to look at—though it is no great joy to know oneself an imbecile.

“Are you well, Fitz?” Dundy asks one evening when they are looking out over the ice together.

James turns from his reverie. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?” he wonders. “I hope I don’t look that awful.”

Henry smiles, then shrugs. “It is only that you seem… _different_ , I suppose. Than your usual manner.”

“How so?”

A weighty silence stretches out between them before Dundy answers. “You were always a genial man, James, but now it seems as if—that is to say, you are as gregarious as ever, old boy, at least when someone is watching you. But you… Whenever someone _isn’t_ watching, it is like a burden has settled over you and cannot be lifted.” Henry shifts awkwardly on his feet. “I mean no judgement, James.”

“I know, Henry.” James folds his hands behind his back. “I—I fear the cold weighs a little heavily on me. Even on a ship so crowded as this one.”

Dundy grins. “What I wouldn’t give to be back on the _Clio_ again.”

“Preferably without the cheetah,” James replies wryly.

Henry thumps him on the back and laughs out loud. Then he grabs at James’ shoulder and pulls them together in a half-embrace. “We’ll be warm again soon enough.”

He speaks with Sir John every day—and yet sometimes James forgets that the man is genuinely alive. That he is still here. That he _is_ , technically, still the leader of this expedition.

They truly have a glut of captains on what is now a one-ship expedition, and the promise of the passage—of _safe_ passage out of this mess they have barely avoided—is not a robust enough balm to alleviate the friction that arises. James does what he can, fading from notice until there are only two points of contention and mostly emerging from this shadow in an attempt to ease tensions, but there is only so much one man can do. There is only so often he can find a middle ground.

“Have I disappointed you, James?”

“Sir?” James asks, frozen like an animal in a predator’s sight.

They are the only two in _Terror_ ’s wardroom. James is just about to leave, to go find Francis on deck somewhere and try once again to find a balance between wanting desperately to be near him and aching awfully at every twitch of his face. He keeps ending up too far in one direction or the other, but he has not yet been able to stop himself from trying yet again.

“You seem perturbed, my boy. Quite perturbed.”

Sometimes when James looks at Sir John he can only see all of their worst mistakes staring back at him. Sometimes he can only see the void that swallowed the man whole.

“I—Not because you, Sir, not at all.” He swallows thickly and tries not to look away. “As ever, I serve at your command.”

James used to take pride in his ability to spin a story that everyone around him—or at least those not predisposed otherwise—felt delight in hearing. Now he finds he never knows what to say.

Because he cannot help himself; because he must tell _someone_ ; because he wants to be seen as something other than the idiot he was when he first boarded _Erebus_ ; because of any number of reasons decent or otherwise, all of which mostly boil down to _because he doesn’t want to be alone_ —he goes to find Thomas Blanky.

If anyone, that is the man who will understand.

The Terrors and—most importantly, he will admit, because James is many things, including a liar, but is trying not to be so self-deluding of one—their _captain_ have treated him rather differently on this final time through. Not that any of them, save that captain and a rat or two, had ever treated him with anything less than the respect a commander deserved; the idea of a commander, at least, if not the man holding the rank. But whether because of his support of Francis’ plan or the familiarity of close quarters or the general malaise that emanates from every speck of his being, these current Terrors seem much less likely to throw him to the first bear that they can find than their previous counterparts.

Blanky is just at the port side of _Terror_ ’s stern, looking out over the western ice. He is blessedly whole and hale and healthy—as healthy as any of them are, living off spoiled rations in a place none of them were meant to go.

“How looks the ice, Mr. Blanky?”

Blanky collapses his spyglass and tucks it away inside his coat. “Well enough, Commander. A few ridges and pits, but that’s to be expected.”

James nods. “Good. With any luck we won’t end up—Ah, well. Best not tempt fate.”

They stand in silence for a moment, looking out over the taffrail. James knows—from relatively recent experience—that the little bits of metal in it would be painfully cold to the touch were one to press bare skin against them. It is an oddly comforting thought.

“I never asked you—” he starts, carefully avoiding Blanky’s gaze “—that is, back when I could have undone it, if it proved to be unwanted—I never asked you whether you would want to know when we made it out of my Fury Beach.”

To anyone else, the sentence would be nonsensical; but realization dawns on Blanky’s face and solidifies to acceptance in a moment.

“We’re out of it, you say?”

“Yes.” James hesitates. “As far as I can tell. It was never very predictable.”

Blanky nods resolutely. “Then I’m glad to know. Helps explain why we’re having so… unbothered of a time. Save for _Erebus_ , of course.” He dips his head toward James in remembrance.

“That was what did it,” James says, keeping his voice low. “What broke the, ah, _repetition_.”

Blanky peers at him intently. “How bad was it?”

James takes a deep breath. Cold air floods his lungs, sharp and clean and as easy as—well, as easy as breathing. As easy as it should be.

He presses his fingers to his chest half-consciously and simply says, “Bad.”

Blanky stares at him until James gives a weak smile, then lets out a rueful huff.

James shifts and tucks his hands behind his back. “I thought I was going mad, in the beginning. And then—well, then I realized that I had to decide I _wasn’t_ , or I wouldn’t be able to get anything done.”

Blanky laughs rough and quiet.

“But now that it’s done, I can’t help but think—how can I know that it was real? That it happened? That everything I tell you is the truth?” James stares down at _Terror_ ’s rail, worn and whole and frost-bitten. “It is not _un_ true, but that—does that even mean anything?”

“Do you believe it happened?”

“I—I don’t know. Sometimes.” _Always_.

“So you’ve knowledge of it? You remember it all?”

“Yes.” James furrows his brow. “That is the whole difficulty. If I have memory of a thing I cannot be sure happened, does that not make me mad?”

“Might do.” Blanky settles back beside him. “Does it matter?”

James sputters. “I—yes? Of course?”

Blanky thumps an arm around his back to keep them from speaking loud enough for others to hear. “Are you going to _tell_ anyone this story? The Admiralty? Sir John?”

James reels back. “Good god man, of course not!”

“Well, you might tell _someone_ , eventually. But,” Blanky reasons, “so long as you don’t go announcing the impossible to close-minded men, well. What harm can come from it?”

James gapes at him.

“I’ve always thought,” Blanky continues, “since _it_ happened, at least, that there was no point in denying it to myself. I won’t speak of it often, don’t really care to; but if accepting it to be true can harm no one and stop it from haunting me then why the hell shouldn’t I?”

“Because—because it is madness.”

Blanky shrugs. “Aye, it might be. But next to all the other things men do, a madness that hurts no one is not so terrible a thing to have. It’s certainly made you a more interesting conversationalist.”

There’s a hint of reassurance gleaming in his eyes. James cannot help but smile in response.

They look at the ice for a little while, the maze of ridges that currently encloses them notably different than the ones James is most familiar with; though similar enough in their formation, if not their arrangement, that he feels he knows them as one knows an old friend they have not had the pleasure of seeing for some time. Of course, he does not know the ice as the man beside him does, but James has never claimed to be a veteran ice master—or even an amateur one.

( _Am I an arctic veteran?_ He asks himself in a fit of melancholy one evening after dinner with the officers instead of listening to Graham’s story.

_I am the prevailing expert on_ failed _expeditions_ , he thinks, then jolts back to the present when Graham finishes his tale to a round of riotous laughter. _That will do for however long until I am in the eyes of everyone else._ )

“Have you told anyone?” James asks the growing darkness. “Er—other than, well, myself.”

“My wife,” Blanky says simply. “And Francis.”

James swallows thickly. “And he believed you?”

“He usually does.”

“You are a consistently honest man,” James murmurs.

Blanky shoots him an unimpressed look. “Don’t be an idiot,” he says, then amends, “sir.”

“Then how else will I occupy my time?”

The other man barks a laugh. “Do what you do best. Talk.”

Blanky pulls the spyglass from his coat pocket and hands it over to James, who takes it with confusion. He pulls it open with stilted, reflexive motions, then stares a little blankly at the other man. Blanky gestures for him to look out across the ice; James lifts the glass slowly to his face, peering through it in a mimic of the ice master’s stance before James had interrupted.

He does not know what he is looking for, though he has stilled his hand and breathing in an attempt to see more clearly. James shoots a bewildered glance sideways; Blanky puts a hand on his shoulder and points off into the distance with the other, just left of straightforward.

There, just barely visible, is a patch of clouds and a tiny pinprick of dark water beneath them. James exhales sharply, hollow with the hope this sight has sparked. It could be nothing, it could be _worse_ than nothing; it is still the closest thing to safe passage James has glimpsed in a lifetime.

James knocks on Francis’ door during of the few stretches when both of them are awake and not immediately occupied. The move to _Terror_ has necessitated a certain rearranging of duties and timing; James mostly plays Francis’ replacement when the other man can no longer argue away his need for sleep. It means he has little and less to do when they are enclosed in winter ice, but at least it is not hiking hundreds of miles across King William Island.

He might be bored, but at least he isn’t dying.

Francis calls out an _enter_ and James pushes inside the room.

If Francis is surprised that James is there doesn’t show; he only looks up from the table in front of him and greets James without any visible judgement. James nods at him, steps a bit further into the room, and loses his words entirely. How does one even begin to convince someone of the impossible?

Francis’ interrupts his silence with a quizzical expression. “Should I send Jopson to fetch something? Tea? Coffee?” He makes a disparaging, vaguely flourishing gesture. “A platter of the finest fruit jellies?”

“Not lemon,” James answers unconsciously.

Francis raises a brow. “The daily medicinal not to your taste?”

What James wouldn’t have given, once, for an unspoiled glass of lemon juice. Now he only smiles and says nothing.

His lack of conversation must be irking Francis, who only pauses for a minute before asking, “Well, is there something you wanted?”

James swallows. “Mr. Blanky has informed me that you are aware of what happened to him at Fury Beach.”

“I am.”

“ _All_ of what happened,” James stresses.

Francis narrows his eyes a fraction and nods slowly. “Yes. All of it.”

James sits heavily into a chair, drumming his fingers against the arm. He is silent, looking at the table beneath Francis’ spread hands. If he leaves now, Francis might pass this off as a fit of oddness and never consider him anything more.

“I have a story to tell you,” James starts abruptly.

Francis quirks a brow; James can’t help but smile sheepishly in response. Yes, what a surprise, that James Fitzjames has some outlandish tale to tell.

“It’s not like the other ones,” he continues, “though I suppose it _is_ about a naval voyage I took part in. But it’s not—nearly as flattering.”

“Then why tell me?”

James blinks. “Because I—”

It is not quite the question to ask. James knows very well why he wants to tell Francis of his ordeal—for the same reason he wants to share most of his thoughts and life and time with him. The question, instead, is what excuse does he have? What reason other than the truth can he come up with? What justification for his want?

He is about to bear his soul to Francis—for the first and dozenth time all at once. Why must he justify himself with any reason but the truth?

“Because I want to,” he finally says, “if you’ll humor me to listen.”

Francis looks at him, eyes searching James’ face, and nods. “Alright.”

So James settles an arm on the table, clears his throat, and says, “The first time, we went east.”

Bit by bit, with each little memory recounted to Francis’ confused but patient face, the vice that holds James rigid starts to loosen. The story unwinds from him like a ship laying anchor, the truth aired out and free at long last.

At one point, Francis reaches out and cover’s James’ hand with his own.

This is what James realizes as he speaks of living the impossible: no matter the lifetime nor the circumstances, at the core of Francis will always be the same man who offered him brotherhood at Victory Point. A safe harbor for a lost ship. The home all good journeys end in.

Something he might just be allowed to have.

**Author's Note:**

>   * This title is from Robert Browning's _Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came_ which, incidentally, is named via a line for _King Lear_. What can I say, I'm weak for intertextuality.
>   * Me, realizing I know nothing about naval terminology or structure: god I hope this is right
>   * "Backpedals” as a verb didn’t exist until the 1880s, which makes a lot of sense when you think about like. Bicycles. So I had to replace that and made a navigational metaphor instead, which, in hindsight, was way more thematically appropriate.
>     * Ah, writing. A mystical process.
>   * Hey, a lot of men named John die in this show. Actually, a lot of men named John have the worst deaths in the show. Franklin, Irving, Morfin, kind of Bridgens… Guess _someone_ should be grateful he isn’t named John Fitzjohn. 
>     * There was a man names John Fitzjohn, who was never claimed as his father’s son, for thirteen summers sailed the seas, crossed the Med and fought the Chinese
>     * Years ago, he signed on an artic expedition, an empire’s hubris brought to fruition
>     * Those ships were trapped in ice and snow, they lost their way home long ago
>     * Thus he died... Now he lies... That John Fitzjohn
>   * Uh, anyway
> 

> 
> I’m tumblin’ [ here](https://glass-es-say.tumblr.com/) which in this context means “crying about _The Terror_ and pining for every single sweater in a period film.”


End file.
